Howie Hawkins

Howie Hawkins has been an organizer for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and independent working-class politics since 1967 when he got active in "The Movement" as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Howie is an ecological socialist who believes self-organization and independent political action for full political and economic democracy by the working class and oppressed social groups is the way to build a society of freedom, equality, solidarity, peace, and ecological sustainability.

When his draft number was called, he enlisted in the Marine Corps while continuing to organize against the Vietnam War. After attending Dartmouth College in the early 1970s, Howie worked in construction in New England and helped organize a workers cooperative that specialized in energy efficiency and solar and wind installations.

He was a co-founder of the anti-nuclear Clamshell Alliance in 1976 and the Green Party in the US in 1984. In the 1970s and 1980s, he was a leader in the anti-apartheid divestment movement to end US corporate investment in the racist system of oppression and labor exploitation in South Africa.

After moving to Syracuse, New York in 1991, he worked as a Teamster unloading trucks at UPS. Now retired, he remains a supporter of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, US Labor Against the War, the Labor Campaign for Single Payer Healthcare, and the Labor Notes network.

Howie has been a Green Party candidate for city council, mayor, and auditor in Syracuse. His vote has grown from 3% for council in 1993 to a near win in 2011 for a council seat with 48% of the vote. In 2015, he received 35% of the citywide vote for city auditor.

As the New York Green Party's candidate for Governor in 2010 and 2014, he campaigned for a ban on fracking, 100% clean energy by 2030, an end to Governor Cuomo's test-punish-and-privatize education agenda, and for progressive taxes and revenue sharing as the alternative to Cuomo's austerity budgets for schools, cities, and public services. In 2014, he received 5 percent of the vote, the most for an independent progressive party candidate for Governor in New York history except the 5.7% in 1918 and 5.6% in 1920 received by the Socialist Party candidates.

Howie's articles on politics, economics, and environmental issues have appeared in Against the Current, CounterPunch, Green Politics, International Socialist Review, Labor Notes, New Politics, Peace and Democracy News, Roll Call, Society and Nature, Z Magazine, and other publications. He is the editor of and a contributor to Independent Politics: The Green Party Strategy Debate (Haymarket Books, 2006).

Available to speak on:

Ecological SocialismEconomic DemocracyIndependent PoliticsInternational Solidarity for Peace and DemocracyLabor and the GreensPublic Education